All that said, the book has its strengths. It’s smoothly written. It worked for me as a suspense novel – as the story went on, I did become quite invested in the resolution of the mystery. I wanted to know what happened to Megan and why.

The prose is lovely, with the sort of wondrous, magical, humor-free tone that could be cheesy in the wrong hands. Doerr's novel is ambitious and majestic without bluntness or overdependence on heartbreak...

...in “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”; he summons up childhood magic and adventure while acknowledging their irrevocable loss, and he stitches the elegiac contradictions together so tightly that you won’t see the seams.

I completely fell in love with the character of Don Tillman and I guarantee anyone else will surely enjoy his well developed personality just as much. Overall, I'd say it's more of a comedy than a romance but definitely worth reading if you want something lighthearted and heart-warming.

Wecker takes the premise and runs with it, and though her story runs on too long for what is in essence a fairy tale, she writes skillfully, nicely evoking the layers of alienness that fall upon strangers in a strange land.

For all the stuff and nonsense about escaping mortality by switching bodies and devouring souls, death is at the heart of this novel....Whatever prizes it wins or doesn't, The Bone Clocks will be a great success, and it deserves to be, because a great many people will enjoy reading it very much. It's a whopper of a story.

The mix of desire and disdain for popularity and acceptance many women face and the way it shapes them as human beings and informs their actions is the heart of Kimberly McCreight’s Reconstructing Amelia.